


Arc-en-ciel

by perihadion



Series: Chiaroscuro [5]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 22:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15959093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/perihadion
Summary: This is the coda to my Chiaroscuro series: Illya returns home.





	Arc-en-ciel

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to write this weeks ago but there were some upheavals in my life and I ended up losing the thread and developing writer's block. I had to finish it up, though, because I just wasn't satisfied that everything was tied up and "okay". I wanted a little more emotional payoff but I think I had to be in the right mindset to provide it for myself and, hopefully, others who read this series.

_the less we say about it the better_  
_we'll make it up as we go along_  
_feet on the ground, head in the sky_  
_it's okay, I know nothing's wrong_  
"This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)", Talking Heads

Illya had known what to expect when he asked Solo to make contact with the CIA on his behalf. But the truth was that he didn’t really have a choice. It wasn’t all about Gaby — or, not directly.

He had watched her on and off for months.

It had been too dangerous when U.N.C.L.E. was first disbanded. He was under surveillance by his agency. They had been watching him for signs of disloyalty and he knew that they would consider him a flight risk.

When enough time had passed he had started to watch her again. He thought — liked to think — from the tilt of her head, from the way she placed some object like a glass or a book just out of his sightline, from the undertone in her voice when he was listening, that she knew. It wasn’t all the time. It wasn’t even that often. When he could, every few months, he would check in: professional concern, or something like that.

But one day he knew he had been caught. He could back off, until they backed off, but the KGB was too dangerous a place for him after that. It was only a matter of time before they disposed of him. That’s when he had started to consider options, when he had returned to the plan he had started building in his mind even before U.N.C.L.E. had disintegrated — which he had thought about idly on stake-outs; on sultry nights running his fingertips up and down Gaby’s arms and staring up at the ceiling; and, most of all, when pondering his chess board. His tactical mind had turned over all the permutations, calculated all the risks: to himself, to Solo, to Gaby.

He made his decision, and he set the plan in motion. He had always known that it could end with him stripped naked, in solitary confinement, or hanging from the rafters. In the hours, days, maybe even weeks that he was held by the CIA, cold and naked, curled up in his cell, he thought about this: it had always been a possibility, even a probability.

In the darkness he had heard things, seen things. At times he had believed that he was back in Gaby’s bed. She would hover in front of him in the darkness, then disappear. His father would be there too, lecturing him. His mother’s face, telling him of his father’s shame. Strange thoughts would run through his mind, push themselves in between the plans he was trying to think of. He would breathe in, breathe out, tap his fingers against the floor to try to ground himself — but the walls absorbed every sound.

By the time they had come for him, he had believed they were a hallucination too. But they had come for him.

*

They had been separated, of course. Illya had been taken into custody by MI6 and Gaby had not been allowed to see him — had to take Waverly’s word that he was being treated better by the agency than he had been by the Americans.

“It has been judged best that you not have any contact for a while,” Waverly had told her, “on account of your history.” She had nodded. What history? Their official history as colleagues, she supposed, and maybe their unofficial history as — what? They were never a ‘couple’, really, a term which implied a level of legitimacy that they had never been able to claim. ‘Lovers’ was a word she could not take seriously.

There was no word for what they had been to each other: they had been in love, a type of love. A type of love without legitimacy, without recognition, without milestones, without a future.

They had been separated for a month after that night that she had slept in his arms in the safe house. She knew that he would be accepted by MI6 because Waverly was on his side, but that was no guarantee that she would ever see him again.

She was still drinking. She was still awake at night. Waverly had said nothing else to her on the subject since that day. Solo had not been in contact, of course. She wondered idly what excuses he had made to his superiors, if any. Probably none.

*

The first place Illya had been taken was to the hotel, the British safe room. He had been told to shower. He had scrubbed himself down without lingering over it. Ten minutes at most. When he was cleaned and dressed they took him to meet Waverly. Not in his office. It was another hotel, a nicer hotel. Business class. Waverly stood to meet him, nodded at the agent who had escorted him there. The agent left the room. The door clicked behind him.

The silence seemed to stretch between them forever, Waverly’s jaw was clenched, and he swallowed. His face was still.

This, he should have expected.

Waverly was Gaby’s father, in the ways that mattered. She was his daughter, and Illya was not just a disapproved-of boyfriend: he was dangerous. He had endangered her physically, emotionally. He could not have done it more completely any other way.

Waverly motioned for him to sit down, and he did. For the first time, the other man smiled, though the smile was tempered. “Well,” he said, “I am glad to see that you are in one piece.” Illya nodded. “And I understand that your wish is to defect to MI6 — though, if I have read the situation right, we’re rather your second choice.”

Illya looked past Waverly for a moment, at the rain that spattered the window, distorting the London skyline. Then he met the other man’s eye. “Waverly,” he said, “whatever you tell me to do, I do. I don’t know what is best. So, you tell me. What is best? — for me to disappear?”

Waverly didn’t flinch as he said, “Maybe that would be best.” Then he leaned back in his chair and continued, as if speaking to himself. “In some ways, maybe it would, and I know that you could do it. If I told you to, you would leave, and none of us would hear anything of you again.” Illya nodded. Waverly took a measured pause. “But I am not going to tell you to do that.”

*

Gaby paused before putting her key in her front door. Something was different; she sensed something, but she couldn’t see what had changed in her environment to trigger that feeling. She looked around herself, and then slowly opened the door and, without turning on the light, walked forward into her hallway. She stopped, and listened to the silence. Nothing.

She put her head around the frame of the kitchen door, and then she knew what she had sensed. Illya sat at the kitchen table, with the lights off. He looked up at her, and she felt her heart stop.

She turned the lights on. They just looked at each other. The moment seemed weighed down with all the possibilities — everything that could have happened between them, everything that could happen now. Gaby felt like she might break open.

“Tea?” heard herself saying. A rare, precious smile spread across Illya’s face like daybreak. He started to stand up, and she motioned for him to sit while she found the tea, and the teapot, and the cups, and saucers, and everything else.

“I missed you,” he said at last, when her back was turned.

She set out the cups and saucers, and placed the pot on the table. “I missed you too,” she said, as she sat down.

It was so different from the last time he was here. There was no desperate ripping of clothes, thinking this time was the last time, the only time. She wanted that; obviously she wanted that, but she wanted other things now too: tea, shared over the table while they talked, a kind of domesticity, legitimacy.

She looked at him. He was staring at her, as if he couldn’t believe she was real — that he could just reach out and touch her.

“I thought I would never see you again,” she said. “I thought Waverly would assign you somewhere — away.”

He placed his hands palm-down on the table in front of him and breathed out, a long sigh, and shook his head. Then he leaned slowly across the table and brushed a piece of hair back from her face, running he tips of his fingers and thumb over her cheek. She closed her eyes.

“I am not going away,” he said.

“Never?” she said.

When she opened her eyes, he was leaning over the corner of the little table, so close to her that she could feel his breath on her skin. He looked like was about to cry — Illya, the little boy: she had so rarely seen this side of him, hidden within Illya the man, efficient, tactical, and angry. She loved him, she really loved him.

“Never,” he whispered, and then pulled her forward into a kiss. She wrapped her arms around him, spread her hands across his shoulders, digging her fingers into his flesh, making sure he was real. He felt just like Illya; he smelled the same.

*

He was still there when she woke up in the morning, legs stretching to the end of her bed, eyes closed. The sunlight spilled across his face, lighting up his eyelashes. As she looked at him, he inhaled, and pulled her in closer. Then he stretched and opened his eyes.

“Good morning,” she said.


End file.
